Docs

What Site2PDF does

Site2PDF opens a page in a real Chrome browser, scrolls it to the bottom so everything lazy-loaded actually loads, and saves what it sees as a PDF, PNG, JPG or ZIP. Because it is a real browser, you get the page as a visitor sees it — web fonts, CSS grid, background images and all.

Two things it deliberately does not do: it does not log in for you (only publicly reachable pages can be captured), and it does not reproduce video or interactive widgets — those become the still frame that was on screen.

Quick start

1. Paste a URL on the capture page.
2. Pick a mode — Single page for one URL, Full website to crawl and choose pages.
3. Pick a format and device, then start the capture. Large sites keep running if you close the tab.
4. Download from the result screen, or later from your account if you are signed in.

You can capture without an account. Signing in adds saved history, scheduled captures and a higher monthly allowance.

Single page, full website or a list

Single page

One URL, captured end to end as one tall image or a paginated PDF. Fastest option, and the one to use for a receipt, a listing or a single article.

Full website

Site2PDF reads the site's XML sitemap when there is one and falls back to following links. You then get a picker with a thumbnail and title per page, and you choose what goes into the archive — switch between rows and grid with the toggle above the list.

Scanning stops after the first batch of pages so a 5,000-page site does not keep you waiting. Press Scan more pages to load the next batch; the counter above the list shows how many were found and how many are selected.

The pages then render one after another and are assembled into a single PDF (or a ZIP of images). Your plan caps the pages per archive — see Plans & limits.

Bulk URLs

Use this when you already know exactly which pages you want and they are not a whole site — a set of competitor pricing pages, ten articles, a client's landing pages. Paste them into the box one per line (commas and spaces work too), press Continue, and you land in the same picker as a full-website scan, with every option available there.

The URLs do not have to share a domain. When they span several sites, each file inside a ZIP is named with its host, so 001-example-com-pricing.pdf is never confused with 002-other-site-org-pricing.pdf.

A bulk run counts as one archive against your monthly allowance, and the number of URLs is capped by your plan's pages-per-archive limit. example.com/page without https:// is accepted; lines that are not URLs are reported and skipped rather than silently dropped.

Formats & devices

Site language

Many sites serve a different language depending on what your browser asks for. Site language sets exactly that request, so you decide which version gets captured instead of inheriting whatever our server happens to prefer. English is the default; twelve languages are available in both single-page and full-website mode.

It applies to every page in an archive, it is stored with saved settings, and a scheduled capture keeps the language it was created with — so its re-runs stay comparable with the first one. A site with only one language ignores it.

Devices

Desktop renders at 1920 px wide, tablet and mobile use the matching viewport and a mobile user agent, so responsive sites return their mobile layout rather than a squeezed desktop one.

Advanced options

Everything here is optional — defaults are chosen to give a clean capture without any setup. Selector fields accept any CSS selector, comma-separated, exactly as you would use in the browser console.

Cookies & ads

Hide cookie banners (on by default) removes consent notices. Site2PDF knows the markup of 30 + consent platforms — OneTrust, Cookiebot, CookieYes, Complianz, Cookie Notice, Osano, Didomi, Usercentrics, Quantcast, TrustArc, Iubenda and more — and falls back to a generic rule that catches pinned overlays talking about cookies. Scroll locks the banner left behind are released too, which is what lets the rest of the page scroll and capture.

Remove ads (on by default) blocks ad networks before they load and collapses the empty boxes they leave behind. Blocking them also makes captures faster.

If something survives, right-click it in your browser, choose Inspect, copy its id or class, and paste it into the matching selector field — for example #cookie-notice or .consent-bar. Then send us the URL so we can add it to the built-in list and nobody has to do it twice.

Wait for the page to finish loading

Off by default. Site2PDF already waits for the load event, scrolls the whole page to trigger lazy content and waits for images — enough for most sites, and switching this on costs time on every page. Turn it on when a capture is missing something that appears a moment after the page opens: late-arriving sections, content fetched after render, slow embeds.

It waits up to 20 seconds for network activity to stop, then captures regardless. That cap matters: some sites poll analytics or rotate ads forever and never go quiet, and waiting for them without a limit would turn a slow capture into a failed one.

Hide elements

Any selector listed here is hidden before the capture. Use it for chat bubbles, newsletter pop-ups, sticky promo bars — anything that is noise in an archive. Hidden elements are also excluded from change detection, which makes this the fix for a page whose only "change" is a view counter or a rotating quote.

Unfix headers

Sticky headers normally repeat down a long capture. Site2PDF already unsticks the common cases; add a selector here for a stubborn one.

Unclip

Some panels scroll inside themselves — a documentation sidebar, a long navigation menu, a list with its own scrollbar. A screenshot only ever sees the part that happened to be scrolled into view. Name the panel here and its height and overflow limits are released so the whole of it is captured.

The limits are released on the panel and its parents, deliberately: a panel freed on its own usually collapses instead of growing, because the height it was obeying belongs to something above it.

Expand accordions

Collapsed FAQ and tab content is invisible to a screenshot. Give a trigger/panel selector pair and Site2PDF opens each one before capturing, so the answers end up in the archive.

Custom pages

Paste URLs by hand instead of relying on the crawl. Useful for pages missing from the sitemap, or when you want an exact set in an exact order.

Worked out a good set of rules for a site? Don't retype it next time — see Saved settings.

Saved settings

Getting the selectors right for an awkward site is the slow part of a capture, and it used to be thrown away every run. A preset stores that work and re-applies it with one click.

The bar sits at the top of Advanced options in both modes:

• Save current… — names the options as they are right now.
• Apply — drops the chosen preset's rules into the form.
• Update — overwrites the chosen preset with what is currently in the form.
• Delete — removes it. Renaming lives in your account, together with a list of what each preset contains.

A preset holds the rules only: cookie, ad, hide and unfix selectors, expand rules, and the two hide toggles. It deliberately does not store the URL, device, format or page selection — those change every run, and applying a preset must never quietly overwrite a choice you just made.

Saving needs a free account. How many you can keep depends on the plan — see Plans & limits. Saving under a name that already exists overwrites that preset rather than creating a second one with the same name.

Legal capture

Turn this on when the archive may need to stand up to scrutiny — evidence of what a page said on a given day, compliance snapshots, a client's claims before they were edited.

It adds two things. Every page gets a certificate footer — the source URL, the capture timestamp in UTC, the viewport, and the page number. And the archive gets a SHA-256 hash of the captured page text. Re-hash the same content later and an identical hash means nothing was altered; a different hash means it was.

Signed-in users get the hash and certificate stored with the archive in their account, so the proof survives the download.

Digitally signed & independently verifiable

A hash proves a file is unchanged, but only if you trust the certificate stating that hash. To remove that dependency, every legal capture is also digitally signed. Alongside the certificate you get two extra files, offered on the result screen and in your account:

• Manifest (…-manifest.json) — a short record naming the archive, its SHA-256, the source URL and the capture time.
• Signature (…-manifest.sig) — an RSA-2048 / SHA-256 signature of that manifest, made with our private key.

Our matching public key is published at https://site2pdf.online/.well-known/site2pdf-signing-pubkey.pem. Anyone — a court, an auditor, opposing counsel — can confirm the archive is authentic and unaltered, with no Site2PDF account and without trusting us:

1. Save the public key from the URL above as pub.pem.
2. Run openssl dgst -sha256 -verify pub.pem -signature …-manifest.sig …-manifest.json. "Verified OK" means the manifest is authentic and unaltered; any tampering fails the check.
3. Confirm the archive is the signed one: its own SHA-256 must match the sha256 field inside the manifest.

Single-page captures can be certified on every plan, with no limit. Certifying a whole site or a bulk list is metered on Free — two a month — and unlimited from Starter up. A cancelled or failed run gives its allowance back.

Site2PDF attests what its browser received at that timestamp, and cryptographically signs that attestation. It is not a notary service and does not sign on behalf of a legal authority.

Schedule & monitor

A watch re-captures a page — or a whole set of pages — on a schedule, and can email you when the content changes. Set one up from the Schedule & monitor panel under any capture, or straight after a capture from the prompt on the result screen. Watches need an account. An overview with plan limits and use cases is on the scheduled website archiving page.

Frequency

Daily, weekly or monthly, on every plan including Free. What the plan limits is how many watches you can run at once — see Plans & limits. Change the frequency of an existing watch from the dropdown in your account.

When you get an email

So a daily watch sends at most one email per day. For a whole-site watch, the email lists exactly which pages changed. Failed runs never email — the error shows in your account instead.

What counts as a change

Site2PDF compares a hash of the page's visible text, with whitespace normalised. Two consequences worth knowing:

• A redesign that keeps the same words is not a change.
• View counters, "today is…" stamps and rotating quotes are a change, every single run. Hide that element under Advanced options → Hide elements and the noise disappears, because hidden elements are left out of the hash.

Timing

Captures run in the background, so a watch is queued at one point and collected shortly after — expect the email within about fifteen minutes of the run, not the same second. Run now behaves the same way: the capture starts immediately, the result and email follow once the run is collected.

Save to Google Drive

A finished archive can go straight to your own Google Drive instead of, or as well as, through your browser. Available from the Starter plan.

Connecting

Open the Cloud storage tab in your account and press Connect. Google asks once for permission, then everything we archive for you lands in a folder called Site2PDF.

We ask for the narrowest permission Google offers: access to files this app creates, and nothing else. We cannot see, read or touch anything else in your Drive — not your documents, not your photos, not folders you made yourself. Disconnecting is one button in the same place, and it revokes the permission at Google rather than just forgetting it here.

Saving one archive

On the result screen, the arrow beside Download opens a short menu with Save to Google Drive. The upload runs on our server, not in your browser, so you can close the tab and it still finishes. Large archives are sent in pieces and resume from where they stopped if the connection drops.

Every scheduled run

In Schedule & monitor, tick Also save each run to Google Drive and every kept capture is delivered there on its own. You can switch it on or off later per schedule in your account. If you disconnect Drive, scheduled runs simply stop being delivered; the archives stay in your account exactly as before.

Archives & retention

Signed-in users get every capture listed in their account — URL, date, format, page count, and the legal hash where one exists — with a download link for as long as the file is kept.

Files are deleted automatically when their retention window ends; the window depends on your plan and is listed below. Download anything you need to keep permanently. Guests get a download link for the current session only — nothing is stored against an account.

Plans & limits

Every plan gets PDF, PNG and JPG, every advanced option, bulk URL lists, and daily / weekly / monthly schedules. Paid plans mostly raise the volume rather than the feature set, with two exceptions: legal capture certifies single pages on any plan but meters full-site certification on Free (two a month), and splitting a PDF archive into separate files (ZIP) starts at Starter — PNG and JPG archives still arrive as a ZIP on Free, since several images cannot be one file.

A bulk run counts as one archive no matter how many URLs are in it, and the "Pages / archive" figure is the most URLs one list may hold. Single-page capture stays free with no account; full-website and bulk runs need a free account.

Don't want a subscription? A one-off archive pack ($7, paid once) gives you 3 whole-site archives that never expire — up to 200 pages each, files kept 90 days, legal capture included. Your monthly free allowance is spent first; a pack archive is only used once that runs out, and a cancelled or failed run returns it.

Compare prices on the pricing section. Plans are billed monthly through Paddle and can be cancelled from your account at any time.

Billing & cancelling

Cancelling

Open your account and press Cancel subscription on the plan card. It takes effect immediately as a decision and never charges you again — you do not need to email anyone, and nobody has to approve it.

You keep your plan until the end of the period you have already paid for. Cancelling on the second day of a month does not cut you off on the second day: the card shows the exact date access ends, and after it the account stays open on the free plan. Your account and its history are not deleted for cancelling — though how long files are kept does change with the plan, which is the next point.

We ask one optional question on the way out — what made you cancel. It is genuinely read by the person who builds this, and it is the fastest way to get something fixed. Skip it if you would rather not say.

Changed your mind

Any time before the end date, the same card offers Keep my plan. The cancellation is dropped and billing carries on as before — no new checkout, same card, same price.

Download your archives before the plan ends

How long files are kept depends on the plan you are currently on, so dropping to Free shortens the window to 14 days for everything, not just for new captures. Anything older than that goes when the plan changes. If you have archives worth keeping — legal captures especially — download them while the paid plan is still running.

Refunds

Cancelling stops future payments; it does not return the payment already taken. If you believe a charge should be refunded, write to us — our payment provider allows refund requests for a limited period after a charge, and we would rather sort it out than have you dispute it with your bank.

Invoices and the name on your statement

Every payment is listed under Billing in your account. Payments are processed by Paddle, which is the merchant of record — so the charge appears on your card statement under Paddle's name rather than Site2PDF. That is expected, not a fraudulent charge.

Changing the card

Update payment method on the plan card opens Paddle's own billing portal, where the card is changed on their page rather than ours — we never see or store card details. The link is created fresh each time you press it and expires shortly after, so there is nothing to bookmark: come back to your account and press it again.

If a renewal is declined, the same control appears in the warning at the top of the plan card.

Troubleshooting

A cookie banner is still in my capture

Copy the banner's id or class into Advanced options → Cookies & ads, and please send us the URL — built-in coverage grows from exactly these reports.

The scan found fewer pages than the site has

Scanning works in batches; press Scan more pages for the next one. If pages are genuinely missing — no sitemap, or nothing links to them — add them under Custom pages.

Part of the page is blank or cut off

Usually lazy-loaded content that renders only when scrolled into view, inside a container with its own scrollbar. Site2PDF flattens the common cases. If it persists, send us the URL.

"This site blocks automated capture"

Some sites sit behind a security service (Cloudflare, Akamai and similar) that is configured to refuse anything that is not a person clicking. When that happens Site2PDF stops and tells you, rather than handing you a PDF of the "you have been blocked" page — a file like that looks like a successful capture until you open it.

If the message says the check did not finish in time, a retry often works: those checks are timed, and a busy moment is enough to miss the window. If it says the site blocks automated capture, that is the site's deliberate choice and nothing on our side changes it. A failed page like this still does not produce a file, and in a multi-page archive the remaining pages carry on and are listed with their result.

"This page is too long for Single Page"

Single Page captures one image, so it has a ceiling — about 40,000 px, roughly forty screens. A page taller than that would come back cut, so Site2PDF refuses it in a few seconds instead of spending three minutes to hand you half a page.

The fix is in the message: run the same URL through Full website mode. It captures long pages in segments up to 100,000 px, with a progress bar and a cancel button, and stitches them into one file. A page beyond even that is reported as truncated rather than trimmed in silence — the archive says what was cut.

The capture needs a login

Not supported — only publicly reachable pages can be captured. There is no way for Site2PDF to hold your credentials safely, so it does not ask for them.

A watch emails me every day with nothing changed

Something on the page changes every load. Find it, hide it under Advanced options → Hide elements, and the hash stops moving. See what counts as a change.

Email me when the archive is ready

Under Advanced options → Notify on a full-website or bulk run. Off by default, and your choice is remembered: tick it once and every later archive mails you too, until you untick it. Single-page conversions have no such option, since they finish while you are looking at the progress bar.

The email arrives when the run finishes or fails — a failure notice matters more than a success one, since otherwise you would sit waiting for a message that never comes. It names how many pages were captured, how many were not, and how long the file stays available on your plan. A failed run also returns the archive to your monthly allowance — a run that produced nothing does not cost you one, whether or not you asked for the email.

A large archive is taking a long time

Every page is a real browser render, so hundreds of pages take minutes, not seconds. Closing the tab is safe — the job finishes on the server and lands in your account.

If you would rather stop it, press Cancel under the progress bar. Anything already generated is deleted and the archive goes back to your monthly allowance, so a cancelled run costs you nothing. The Generate button stays disabled while a run is in progress — a second press would start a second archive and spend a second slot.

Cancelling lands within one page rather than instantly: the capture runs in a background process, and it checks for your request between pages rather than abandoning one half-rendered.

Privacy & fair use

Captures are stored for your retention window and then deleted. We do not sell data, and we do not share your archives. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

Please capture responsibly: only content you have the right to access, and be considerate with repeated whole-site captures of sites you do not own. Respecting the target site's terms is on you — see the terms.